May 12, 1999

Big Raids Resume as NATO Reasserts Demands on Serbs

By STEVEN LEE MYERS with MICHAEL R. GORDON

ASHINGTON -- Undeterred by calls from China and Russia to halt
the bombing, American and allied forces pounded targets across
Yugoslavia on Tuesday as NATO leaders vowed to continue the air war
until President Slobodan Milosevic agreed to meet all of their
demands.

After relatively quiet nights of bombing following the strike on
the Chinese embassy in Belgrade late Friday night, NATO aircraft
hit 37 targets overnight on Monday and, with clearing skies,
pressed their attack virtually without pause through the day and
night Tuesday, American and NATO officials said.

Rebuffing Yugoslavia's announcement that it had begun
withdrawing Army and police units from Kosovo, NATO warned that it
would continue attacking those forces, even those that might be
retreating, until Milosevic agreed to remove all of his troops and
allow hundreds of thousands of Albanian refugees to return to their
homes under the protection of an international force.

Officials in Brussels and here in Washington said there was no
evidence that any Yugoslav forces had left the province, dismissing
the announcement as a ploy by Milosevic to capitalize on the
international outrage over the bombing of China's embassy.

"Number one, we have seen no evidence of any partial pullout,"
Secretary of Defense William Cohen told members of the Senate's
Appropriations Committee Tuesday. "Number two, a partial pullout
would mean a total victory for him. A partial pullout is not
acceptable."

Diplomatic efforts to end the NATO bombardment remained mired in
the political fallout from NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy.
Russia's special envoy, Viktor Chernomyrdin, who had been trying to
play peacemaker before the embassy attack, met with China's top
leaders in Beijing Tuesday and offered no real sign of progress.

China repeated its insistence that NATO stop the bombing before
any negotiations for a peace settlement could begin. While
Chernomyrdin said he still supported peace proposals reached last
week in Germany that linked a bombing pause to verifiable evidence
of Serbian troop withdrawal, he also called for a halt to the NATO
bombing while in Beijing.

After the embassy bombing, China suspended its cooperation with
the United States on several fronts, including its military
contacts, which the Clinton administration has tried to cultivate.
The Pentagon announced Tuesday that China had suspended a visit by
the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Charles Krulak, and a trip
by Cohen, now scheduled for June, appears unlikely.

Cohen said Tuesday that the Chinese government was taking
advantage of a mistake that the United States and NATO had
acknowledged. He cited the fact that Chinese media only today
reported President Clinton's apology.

"There is a difference between righteous indignation and
calculated exploitation," Cohen said.

Nearly seven weeks into NATO's air war, Yugoslavia's government
announced on Monday that it had begun to withdraw some of its
troops, saying they were no longer needed because it had defeated
the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Yugoslav officials did not say how many of its approximately
40,000 troops in or near Kosovo would be leaving, but some
suggested the withdrawal could occur more quickly if NATO refrained
from bombing the retreating columns on the roads.

The Yugoslav officials also said that they were ultimately
prepared to shrink their force in Kosovo to the "peacetime"
level. It was unclear whether they were referring to troop levels
before the bombing began or those set in a cease-fire in October
1998.

Officials at NATO and at the Pentagon derided the announcement,
saying that it would leave Yugoslavia with a force of almost 30,000
in Kosovo.

"Something which allows 10,000 troops to go home while the
other 30,000 get on with business as usual in Kosovo is not
something that we are prepared to aid and abet in any way," NATO's
spokesman, Jamie Shea, said Tuesday. "President Milosevic has to
take all of his forces out."

Officials here in Washington said Tuesday that intelligence
reports indicated Serbian-led forces continued to mount at least
small- scale operations against ethnic Albanian rebel fighters and
civilians. Over the weekend, the Yugoslav forces resumed using
helicopters and flying at least some of their aircraft, the
officials said.

Other forces have dispersed and dug into defensive positions,
particularly along the rugged valley that runs north from
Macedonia, evidently in preparation for the possibility of a NATO
invasion.

In a sign that Yugoslavia takes seriously reports that NATO's
planners might someday consider an invasion from Hungary, too, the
Army has reportedly begun reinforcing positions along a defensive
line north of Novi Sad, in the province of Vojvodina, one senior
defense official said.

As NATO's campaign entered its 49th day, there was no easing of
the bombing. Throughout the day American and allied aircraft --
including American B-1's, B-2s, B-52s, F-117 "stealth" attack
jets and the whole array of fighters -- criss-crossed the skies over
Yugoslavia. They struck radio and television towers, oil storage
tanks, bridges and an Army barracks in Cacak, officials said.

Tuesday's strikes followed an intensive night which included at
least one strike in Belgrade, an army barracks at Mount Avala, the
officials said. It was the first strike in the capital since the
bombing of the embassy, but officials strongly denied that there
had been any change in the attack plans because of the bombing.

Tuesday night, explosions again rocked the edges of Belgrade,
and new strikes were reported in Pancevo, the industrial city whose
oil facilities have been been repeatedly struck by NATO warplanes.

In the latest strikes, officials reported having success against
tanks, artillery and other armored forces in Kosovo, though they
acknowledged that taking out those forces was difficult and
painstakingly slow, especially since many are now well hidden,
taking advantage of natural features like forests and caves, as
well as man-made tunnels and bunkers.

After seven weeks of bombardment, officials here say the forces
in Kosovo are clearly suffering, especially from the shortage of
fuel, which has been reduced to a relative trickle. One official
said the forces "are in fuel extremis."

But there are few signs they are ready to break. "They're
dispersing themselves very well," a senior defense official said.
"They have prepared defensive measures."

Despite Yugoslavia's claims to have vanquished Kosovo's rebels,
Pentagon and NATO officials said that Yugoslav troops have been
pressing their attacks against rebel strongholds in the region.
They said there was fighting in the north, particularly along the
roads from Pristina to Podujevo and Mitrovica. There have also been
skirmishes in central Kosovo and near the Albanian border. NATO
officials said that the Kosovo Liberation Army was very active
inside Kosovo but was suffering heavy casualties. A Kosovo
Liberation Army representative in Kukes, Albania, near the Kosovo
border, said today that the rebel army command in Kosovo had seen
"absolutely no evidence of a withdrawal" of Yugoslav forces.